THE FINANCE Minister yesterday tried to put a positive spin on the coalition’s proposals aimed in bolstering the economy as the opposition piled on the criticism, accusing the administration of burdening the public with additional taxes.
“The fact that we arrived somewhere I believe is a big success for the Cypriot economy lifting a shadow that has been around for six months, negatively affecting businesses and foreign investors,” Charilaos Stavrakis said.
The minister warned against populism, saying the measures were necessary to improve state revenues and cut expenditure.
Stavrakis said his was optimistic that the government would be able to meet the target of saving €35 million from the state payroll.
“In any case it is mild enough in the sense that we are not talking about wage cuts for civil servants but curbing increases,” the minister said.
Stavrakis was speaking to state broadcaster CyBC earlier yesterday, before the civil servants announced a one-day strike for next week.
DISY chief Nicos Anastassiades said the government’s measures were 60 per cent taxes and 40 per cent savings, which will be achieved following consultations between the president and other officials.
“Attempts to achieve these savings in the past ended in complete and utter failure,” Anastassiades said. The opposition leader also appeared doubtful regarding the government’s declaration to cut the number of public servants.
“We heard the same declaration last year but instead of cuts we had increases,” Anastassiades said.
He said there are ways of curbing the numbers – by moving government employees between departments and hiring one person for every five who retire.
EDEK leader Yiannakis Omirou said after eight months of wrangling, DIKO and AKEL announced measures which are not only unfair but also unsuccessful.
“Instead of measures that secure fiscal consolidation through structural changes … the (state) pension system remains untouched, structural changes are shelved, and reduction of expenditure sound more like wishful thinking than reality,” Omirou said.
He added that his party would not consent to these measures.
AKEL chief Andros Kyprianou sought to appease.
“If we had the majority in parliament and our government was in power, rest assured that these would not be the measures we would have presented to tackle the economic crisis,” Kyprianou said.
He said measures had to be adopted by parliament, which in the past had rejected proposals to tax companies and property.
Among those who rejected them were government partners DIKO.
“This is not the end of this effort; we will discuss more measures in due course because we have the view that profit-makers should contribute more,” Kyprianou said.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday afternoon, DIKO chairman Marios Garoyian said the proposals were not completely fair or balanced and blamed his coalition partners and the finance ministry for this.
“The measures are a first step to the right direction. The effort will continue until the package is more complete. More balanced and fairer,” Garoyian said.
He said if the AKEL leadership and the finance ministry had not focused on the aspect of increasing state revenue and had accepted DIKO’s proposals for structural changes, the package would have been more balanced and fair.
Garoyian said his party was risking suffering political cost but it would not lie and tell people that everything was all right because of the upcoming elections.
“DIKO’s position is honest, unwavering and clear, even if we are punished for this.”
